


A Thrush In The Trenches

by orphan_account



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, ww1 au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-06
Updated: 2014-08-06
Packaged: 2018-02-12 01:17:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2090304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i> Jean Prouvaire is eighteen when the war starts, and for Christmas the village give him a basket of white feathers. Granny, of course, is furious. Wants to burn them all while he sits there buried up to his wrists in them, fingers loose so that he can feel every strand of his cowardice against his knuckles and fingerprints.</i> - a world war one AU focussing on les amis de l'ABC as part of an english battalion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Thrush In The Trenches

**Author's Note:**

> I started this three years ago and abandoned it. With the anniversary happening, I'm rewriting it.

_Suddenly he sang across the trenches,_

_vivid in the fleeting hush_

_as a star-shell through the smashed black branches,_

_a more than English thrush._

 

Jean Prouvaire is eighteen when the war starts, and for Christmas the village give him a basket of white feathers. Granny, of course, is furious. Wants to burn them all while he sits there buried up to his wrists in them, fingers loose so that he can feel every strand of his cowardice against his knuckles and fingerprints. The rattle in his chest, and his trouble breathing, are poor excuses for staying at home, safe and warm, while peoples husbands and brothers and sons and fathers are risking their lives across the Channel. But then, Granny reminds him, her hands sitting on his arms just below the bones of his shoulders, he’s all she has.

“It won’t be much good if we’re invaded.” As he runs a feather through his fingers, threads it through his buttonhole so that he can wear his shame over his heart, his faulty lungs, where it belongs. “For one thing, we can’t speak German.”

“You see, how would I get along without your wit?” She’s trying to make him feel better, but he still catches her wrist when she tries to take the basket away. “Jean.”

“We thought it would be over by now. But they’re starting to attack us, now.”

“That isn’t your fault.” No. But it is his duty to protect the people he loves, even if that is just his grandmother. Presses his mouth to her knuckles and sighs, weight in his chest and across his shoulders. “You didn’t pass the medical. That isn’t your fault, either.” Then why does it feel like it is?

“Will you help me cut my hair?”

 

She keeps a lock of it, curled small and pressed into a locket hung around her neck, and even though she refuses to kiss him goodbye she helps him pack a bag and goes with him on the bus all the way to the train station. The notebook is pushed into his hand as he leans out of the window to give her a handkerchief, small and leather-bound and locked with brass and key.

“You’d better write.”

“Every day.”

“Not to me,” and the tears shine on her face and he wants to climb out of the window and gather her in his arms and promise not to leave after all, “but for me. And for you. And when you come back we’ll get that published.”

“Granny--.” The train whistle cuts him off, for the better, because suddenly he can’t breathe around his stuttering broken breathing, and as it pulls away he hears her shout that she loves him. He has to hide his tears in his knees as he slumps back in his seat, compartment door closed and curtains drawn, feet curled underneath him until the conductor comes and takes his ticket. His eyes fall on his face, the high cheekbones and pale flesh, then on the feather in his jacket.

“Feet off the seats, sir, if you please.” So he puts them flat on the floor and raises his head, keeping his gaze on the roll of English countryside speeding past the window until he’s gone again.

 

His sandwiches are slightly squashed by the time he’s hungry enough to eat them, exhausted from crying and fear and worry, and the light is fading as they pull into a station Jean has never heard of. He picks the cheese out, wrapping it back up in brown paper, and finds he only has appetite for the crusts. Then, he adds guilt to the rest of what’s eating him from the inside out, and sits blinking at the bread in his lap and trying to steady his breathing.

“My feet are on the floor.” He mumbles, when his door slides open again. There’s a pause, and he doesn’t look up, because he doesn’t want to see the look of dawning realisation and disappointment on the conductors face again. He knows he’s a coward. He knows he should be fighting. He’s trying to put it right.

“Good show. Is anyone else in here with you?” It isn’t the conductor, not Northern enough, with no judgement in their voice. Still, Jean blanches when he looks up to see a uniform, pristine hair and polished boots, one eyebrow raised as he looks him over. “Are you quite alright?”

“There’s no one in here with me.” Suddenly, he feels shame for his accent. Working class and rough in comparison to the soldiers equally polished Southern tones. He avoids the latter question, hopes he’ll forget and leave seeing that he’s obviously distressed, but instead he sits opposite him and crosses one leg over the other as he lights a cigarette.

“You don’t mind, do you?” Holds it up between two fingers, expression a little on the stern side, and as he shakes his head Jean notices the decoration on his lapel. Moves to cover his own addition to his suit. “Would you like one?” The expression doesn’t change, but the flicker of his eyes over Jean’s chest is unmissable. “What’s that, now?” As he leans across to take the corner of his jacket between thumb and forefinger, mouth a tight line as he plucks the feather out to look at it. “A good luck charm?”

“A mark of cowardice, sir.”

“You don’t need to call me sir if you aren’t part of my squadron. I’m Julian.” Either he ignores what Jean says, or he’s so angered by it he feels he can’t comment. “Enjolras.” And Jean can only watch as he opens a window to drop the feather onto the tracks.

“Jean Prouvaire.” He takes the cigarette when it’s offered, even though the burn hurts his lungs and makes him cough.

“Ah, another Frenchman. Good. I was getting quite tired of men balking at my name.” No, Jean thinks, it’s your rank which makes me nervous. “Some of them feel they can’t follow a man with French roots, you see. Those above are changing my soldiers around. Giving me all the Anglo-French they can find.” There’s such an ease to his words, to his smoking, to the way he looks at him that Jean, eventually, relaxes. Crumples what’s left of his sandwiches into a ball to put in the bin.

 

Julian, it transpires, is a devil at cards. Jean wants to sleep by the time he’s gambled his supply of chocolate away in game after game of poker, the Captain smug and grinning at him through the dark. He’s taken his hat off, laid it out beside him, piled the bars on top and not mentioned the feather at all. When Jean starts to nod, he moves, pats the empty space he’s left for his feet and puts his own up on the opposite seat.

“Conductor won’t like that.” He finds himself mumbling, head against the window, already drowsy.

“To the devil with what he thinks,” he catches the half grin, feels a hand pat his ankle hard, “I outrank him.”

“He’s not in your squadron.”

“No. And yet he thinks he has the right to pass judgement on those left here.” There’s something, a note of disappointment, and Jean feels the stab of fear that it’s aimed at him before Julian leans over to hold his jaw and make him look at him. “Refusal to fight,” low, quiet and gravelly, a growl between them, “does not make you a coward. It makes you a revolutionary.”

 

He wakes just as the train is pulling in to Paddington, alone, with fresh morning light streaming through the windows. Julian, and all his equipment, is gone, but half of the chocolate he’d won sits neatly on top of Jean’s pack. He bites his lip, blinks sleep from his eyes, and as he leaves the train he pulls his notebook from his pocket to recount the evening he’d spent in his company. If he never sees him again, he’ll have at least immortalised him in words. London rushes around his ears and the smog makes it harder to breathe, but he still buys a packet of cigarettes and sits crosslegged, without a feather and without judgement, back against the station wall until he remembers that he has nowhere to stay as of yet. The air is cold, a bite to it which winds down the roads and whips his scarf up around his neck and ruffles his hair, still so short around his ears that Jean has to raise a hand to check that it’s still there; that Granny didn’t scalp him out of spite. He almost misses the village, but then, he’s here for a reason.

 

“Prouvaire, J.” The clinic isn’t as sterile as it had been at home, but Jean doesn’t complain as he looks up and meets the eyes of the man calling his name. He isn’t quite sure yet how he’ll convince them to let him in. Let him fight. Let him leave his cowardice behind. Shrugs his shirt off of his shoulders in the harsh medical light, eyes squinting as he’s held by cold hands and a stethoscope is pressed in at his ribcage. “Your notes say that you’re an asthmatic, and that your lungs are weak. What do you need a second opinion for?”

“I want to fight.” Looks up into the face, kind and open with tiny spectacles and he can’t be more than five years Jean’s senior. Surely he’ll understand. “I want to help.”

“You can help from here, Prouvaire.” He packs his things away, and Jean puts his shirt back on.

“Not enough. I can join the homeguard but they don’t do anything.”

“They boost morale.”

“What do you do?” The man smiles, pats the cross on the pocket of his uniform. “Well, what would you do, then?”

“Much the same as you, I imagine.”

“Then why tell me that I can help from here?”

“You’re young.” He laughs, sits down and removes his glasses, resting his elbows on his knees to look at him steadily. “If you’re absolutely set on this, Prouvaire, then I see no reason why you shouldn’t be allowed to go. I’ll have a word with my commanding officer, see if we can’t have you in the same battalion as me. At least then I would be able to keep an eye on your health.” He’s speechless, for a moment, because he had been sure that a second opinion would be the same as the first. Instead he takes his hand to shake vigorously, grinning.

“Thank you. Thank you, sir.”

“Leopold. I suppose in a few weeks you’ll be calling me Combeferre. We’ll see you on the front, then, Jean Prouvaire.”

 

 


End file.
